Emmet Lied to us! - Hoverboards and antigravity
Are we getting closer to the flying skateboard or teletransportation?
The young man places a foot on the skate and fixes his sight in his objective: A stair step 30 meters ahead. A fraction of a second before reaching it, he has to complete a series of movements that will allow him to lifp his board in the air, spin it and land over it with a certain grace, to keep skating.
And there he goes. A stride with his right foot. Another one. One last one, now with a nice speed, say: 20 km/h.
But something failed...
The planned movement is just not doe as expected, perhaps either too clumsy or too late. Now he's on a free fall, tracing a parabola that will leave him, in a fraction of a second with a Constant acceleration with a vertical in between, with his face against the park's flowerbeds that are made of concrete..
The skate remained static at the stair's steps.
The kid may have lost a couple of teeth and a decent amount of blood, but he gave us an important physics lesson. In his accident there's several classic mechanics principles displayed. Action and reaction, inertia and momentum are the ones that guide the launch and landing. But, n the end, the only one to blame is the Gravity. The damned Gravity.
If there's something I was not able to forgive to Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, was not stealing a Hoverboard, those wonderful skates that could levitate over pavement. 80sh, bright colors, that didn't matter. We all fell in love with that wonder nearly instantly.
Not long ago (2 years) a promotional video came out, that made us all Illusion about experimenting something similar to that that we saw in that movie:
"The following demonstrations are completely real", is a serious abuse of sarcasm.
It was a lie.
How far are we from getting objects that defy the Damned Gravity?
It is a complex matter that has held science hostage for around a century already. Because I'm referring to really defy it, to levitate on earth as astronauts do in outer space. Airplanes and Pamela Anderson boobs are another category, beating gravity with sheer force.
If we lived at a polar cold world and our streets and sidewalks were made out of some particular materials, it'd be very simple for hoverboards to exist, thanks to what we know as superconductors. Superconductivity is a state that certain natural elements can achieve at low temperatures. They transmit electricity with no resistance or loss of energy. The result is a force field that makes a magnet placed on top of a superconductor to float.
This is the Meissner Effect. Pretty similar to what the hoverboards in BtoF2 do. Then, if we cool down the floor and tape two magnets to a board... Done! Flying skate... Flying shoes... Flying... whatever!!!
NOPE.
What makes the application of this technology possible in certain uses, like levitating trains -or Maglev-, makes it impossible for domestic use. The involved objects have to comply with certain characteristics, ones that the ground we step on, does not.
OK. We give up. We should be happy to say that we will settle with a handful of levitating skating fields in a couple of years... shouldn't we?
No. There's a new scientific research that may take us out of this dilemma in a couple of years, with some luck: quantum mechanics.
Why? Because science has already found out how to beat gravity in several ways, mainly opposing it with an equal or stronger force. Magnetic Levitation and aerodynamics (thanks, Bernoulli, for so much!) are nice examples.
But that is classic mechanics, Newtonian. That would make us fly more like Iron man than like Peter Pan. I know of nobody that would refuse to fly propelled by engines, but it has two main drawbacks: It is expensive and dangerous. Top that off with the noise engines do, disgusting, compared to the humming hoverboards do.
In quantum physics there's a study of what is known as hypothetical forces and particles. Yes, they are called like that because with a series of calculations allow us to infer that they exist, but we still cannot prove it. Some years ago, for example, the existence of the hypothetical Higgs Boson, predicted in 1964 by Peter Higgs, was proved. The scientist received a Nobel prize for this discovery, 49 years late.
Talk about late payments.
So, anti-gravity, is like getting off the bus two stops before. Because, we still have to prove the existence of the Graviton before we can prove the existence of the Gravitino.
To conclude: How far are we from hoverboards like the ones in that movie? VERY FAR. But there's people working hard on that. Meanwhile, the skaters will have to be more careful with the objects that surround them.
Or not. It's just too fun to watch them get REKT.
If you liked this post and its informal way of talking about sciences, please, follow me for more!
Leave a comment either for good or for bad reviews. I take everything as constructive, and I really appreciate the feedback, even from trolls (at least a troll read it before being himself!).
Copyrights:
All the previously used images are of my authory or under a CC0 license (Source: pixabay), unless openly stated.
All the Images created by me possess a WTFPL licencing and they are free to redistribute, share, copy, paste, modify, sell, crop, paste, clone in whatever way you want.
Actually, a gravitino may be easier to detect as it could a candidate for dark matter. Or it could be totally unstable and decay too quickly. Both setups exist.
But to connect supersymmetric gravity theories to practical applications like a-gravity (which I think is a better name than antigravity which is misleading in my opinion), this is something I do not know. I actually do not understand whether there is a connection at all.... I would tend to say 'no' but who knows, in 150 years?
150 years is a LOT of time for technology. I would be a bit more generous.
I am kind of conservative ;)